2 - Histories of nudging

Summary

“No predicament is so bleak as to be unimprovable by historical investigation into its origins and development”

Smith (2022: 56)

It is, perhaps, unfair to characterize nudging as a predicament. In keeping with Justin Smith, however, we do believe that in order to improve the use and application of nudging in the future it is vital to have a sound understanding of its past. Several accounts exist of the history of nudging and its foundational ideas. These histories have been developed both by advocates of nudging (see Hallsworth & Kirkman 2020; Oliver 2017; Thaler 2016; Sunstein 2013) and by those adopting more critical perspectives (see Jones et al. 2013; Whitehead et al. 2018). In this chapter we do not seek to merely repeat these stories. Instead, by charting the intertwining histories of the ideas, institutions and practices that have contributed to the emergence of nudging we aim to reveal why nudging has taken the forms it has, why there are evident variations in the ways it is understood and applied, and how in the future nudging may take very different forms. In this context, the value of an historical perspective on nudging lies in the fact that it can help to reveal the inherent contingency of the present and open-up new futures.

Figure 2.1 indicates the rising popularity of “nudging” as an internet search term since the publication of Thaler and Sunstein's Nudge in the spring of 2008. There is a fairly steady rise in interest in the term over the next 7 years or so until a marked peak in 2017. This is clearly the historical watershed for the term. So, what happened in 2017? In 2017 Richard Thaler, the first author of Nudge and Professor of Behavioural Science and Economics at the University of Chicago received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his contributions to behavioural economics and media and web interest in the idea of nudging naturally spiked following the announcement of the award. But this point in time is a salutary one from which to work back from in our exploration of the history of nudging.